Last night a strange spiral lit up the sky over Norway, from Trøndelag to Finnmark, and many people took pictures.

The phenomenon began when what appeared to be a blue light seemed to soar up from behind a mountain. It stopped mid-air, then began to circulate.

Within seconds a giant spiral had covered the entire sky. Then a green-blue beam of light shot out from its centre - lasting for ten to twelve minutes before disappearing completely.

Russia denied any missile tests in the area. Link to story. Link to photo gallery. -via Metafilter

(image credit: Svein-Egil Haugen)

(YouTube link)

The night of the full moon in November is known as Loy Krathong Day in Thailand.

Loy is "to float" and Krathong is a "leaf cup" usually made of banana leaf as one often sees in the market. The leaf cup is used to hold something. Loy Krathong is, therefore, the floating of lights in a leaf cup. During October and November, all the rivers and canals in the lowlands are flooded and the waters in some places overflow their banks. The rainy season is now in a sense over. It is the time of rejoicing for the weather is fair after the rains.

In this video, 100,000 illuminated rafts fill the Mae Klong River. http://www.thailandlife.com/loykrathong.html

Campbell's monkeys have six basic sounds they make in the wild, but they can string these six sounds together in ways that mean many different things. Researcher Karim Ouattara spent 20 months observing six families of monkeys in the Ivory Coast and figured out what many sequences of calls mean.

With no danger in sight, males make three call sequences. The first - a pair of booms - is made when the monkey is far away from the group and can't see them. It's a summons that draws the rest of the group towards him. Adding a krak-oo to the end of the boom pair changes its meaning. Rather than "Come here", the signal now means "Watch out for that branch". Whenever the males cried "Boom-boom-krak-oo", other monkeys knew that there were falling trees or branches around (or fighting monkeys overhead that could easily lead to falling vegetation).

Interspersing the booms and krak-oos with some hok-oos changes the meaning yet again. This call means "Prepare for battle", and it's used when rival groups or strange males have showed up. In line with this translation, the hok-oo calls are used far more often towards the edge of the monkeys' territories than they are in the centre. The most important thing about this is that hok-oo is essentially meaningless. The monkeys never say it in isolation - they only use it to change the meaning of another call.

As complex as their language is, Campbell's monkeys can only communicate things that they see or experience in the present. Link

Although we are used to professional fakery, not all movie stunts are done with computers, green screen, or even stuntmen. Here are thirteen movie stars, past and present, and the stories of the dangerous stunts they've done themselves.

In his breakthrough role as Aragorn in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, Viggo Mortensen performed all of his own stunts. Peter Jackson referred to Viggo, and two other stuntmen as “the walking wounded” due to all of the injuries they sustained while filming the trilogy. While filming a fight scene, Viggo actually had one of his teeth knocked out and had it repaired over lunch, and returned to work immediately afterward. However, his most dangerous stunts were actually performed in the movie Hidalgo, where he was to race at breakneck speeds on horseback – a stunt that the professional stuntmen would not even attempt.

With videos. Link -via Digg [Update 12/8/09 - warning: website may contain virus, probably a rogue ad]

The year end lists are coming fast and furious! Here's one you don't see year after year, since flash mobs have only recently been numerous enough to invite ranking. Each one has a video, so you can see whether they deserve the honor. Pictured is the promotion for Elf Yourself last month in New York City. Link

Any geek who is not quite sure if this is an appropriate time to pull out the iPhone can use this handy flowchart from Gizmodo. You can enlarge the chart at the link if you need to. Link -via Boing Boing

A staff photographer for New Yorker magazine referred to only as Platon set up a studio in the United Nations building this past September to get portraits of as many world leaders as possible. For five days he took photographs of each member of the General Assembly that came to his temporary studio. Those portraits are now posted in slide show form. Click on any of them, and you can hear Platon's story of how he got the picture, and his impressions of each president or prime minister. http://www.newyorker.com/online/multimedia/2009/12/07/091207_audioslideshow_platon -via the Presurfer

Think back about the school-related movies of the 1980s to get ready for today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You know the quotes, but can you remember which quote is from Back to School, Summer School, or Fast Times at Ridgemont High? I scored 80%, even though I've only seen one of the movies. Link

Just in time for Christmas gift-giving, the wolves you know and love are howling at the moon on a one-piece footed pajama set!

# The Official Three Wolf Moon Pajamas.
# Increases Sex Appeal*
# 3 Wolf Moon has been Featured on The Office, ABC News, & The Chicago Tribune
# WARNING! Wolves on PJs May Occasionally Come to Life*
# Chicks Dig Guys in Wolf Pajamas*

* Results may vary.

They feature a trap-door opening so that you never have to take them off! Only $44.95. http://www.pajamacity.com/3-Wolf-Moon-Fleece-Adult-Footed-Pajamas-with-Drop-Seat/productinfo/J635-WO/ -via Buzzfeed

Some people get rich, others set world records, but a few get started on something and just can't stop. Read about the man who wrote 200,000 books, the scientist with 3,200 patents, and Dr. Shrikant Jichkar, who holds 20 postgraduate degrees.

Jichkar, a politician in his native India, went to school and did pretty well, becoming an M.D. Then he became a lawyer. Then he did business administration and journalism. He got master's degrees in sociology, history, psychology, philosophy, English literature and others. At one point he even joined the police force, apparently just for kicks, as he resigned sometime later. Because that was just his professional life, he was also a photographer, painter and actor, but, again, just for kicks.

Link -via mental_floss

The Beverly Center mall in Los Angeles has a different kind of Santa Claus. For nine years now, Santa is a hunky young man who performs with the Candy Cane Girls in a 15-minute show in the center of the mall on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Twenty-nine-year-old James Ellis is this year's Hunk Santa. The show is quite popular with shoppers.

This year, though, Hunky’s story took a turn for the serious when one of his fellow mall performers — a 26-year-old female aerialist — plunged three stories in front of hundreds of horrified spectators and landed on a video projection cube on the mall’s first floor. Hunky Santa was the first person to rush to her aid.

The aerialist injured her wrist and pelvis, but is expected to recover completely. Link -via a comment at Metafilter

Photographer Kerry Skarbakka explores the falling human body in a set called The Struggle to Right Oneself. You'll look at these and ask, "How did he do that? And how bad was he hurt?"

Using myself as model and with the aid of climbing gear and other rigging, I photograph the body as it dangles from dangerous precipices or tumbles down flights of stairs. The captured gesture of the body is designed for plausiblity of action, which grounds the image in reality. However, it is the ambiguiy of the body's position in space that allows and requires the viewer to resolve the full meaning of the photograph. Do we fall? Can we fly? If we fly then loss of control facilitates supreme control.

The photograph that first grabbed my attention was Skarbakka falling in the shower, but you'll have to look for that yourself because it's a nude. Link -via reddit

When is it OK to take an open flame on an airplane? When it's the Olympic flame, ignited in Greece and on it's way to Vancouver for the winter games.

After departing Athens, Greece on October 30th, the Olympic Flame has been traveling across Canada, now about 1/3 of the way into its 106-day, 26,000 km overland relay (another 18,000 km by air). Over 12,000 torch-bearers will carry the flame along a winding path covering all of Canada, passing through over 1,000 communities total - from Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary to smaller communities such as Gwa'Sala-Nakwaxda'xw, Notre-Dame-du-Lac, Moose Jaw and Sheshatshiu. The final destination: Vancouver's BC Place on February 12, 2010, where it will light the Olympic Cauldron and signal the start of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

The Big Picture has 33 photographs that follow the torch's journey. Link -via J-Walk Blog

(image credit: REUTERS/Andy Clark)

Diseases and conditions are often named after the doctor who first described or treated it. Years after the doctor is gone, people associate the name with the condition, such as Tourette's Syndrome.

Credit George Gilles de la Tourette for his modesty. When the French neurologist first described the illness that now bears his name in 1884, he didn’t name it after himself. Instead, he referred to the condition as “maladie des tics.” Tourette’s mentor and contemporary Jean-Martin Charcot renamed the illness after Tourette.

Tourette didn’t have such great luck with patients, though. In 1893, a deluded former patient shot the doctor in the head. The woman claimed that she lost her sanity after Tourette hypnotized her. Tourette survived the attack.

Mental_floss takes a look at 13 of those people and the ailments that made them a household name. Link

The first successful flight of an aircraft powered by the sun was completed in Switzerland yesterday as the Solar Impulse HB-SIA took off and landed safely. Solar Impulse founder Bertrand Piccard had dreamed of the day his plane would take flight for a decade.

With a good weather window on Thursday, test pilot Markus Scherdel was given the go ahead to take the spindly aircraft to up to take-off speed shortly after one o’clock local time. With the airplane lined up on the runway, Scherdel powered up the four motors using the on-board batteries and HB-SIA gained speed until he was able to lift off the pavement.

In a flight very reminiscent of the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903, Scherdel flew 350 meters down the runway at an altitude of only one meter in a flight lasting 28 seconds.

The team hopes to achieve a 36-hour flight by next summer. Link to story. Link to website. -via the Presurfer